Future Skills and Future Roles

As a professional discipline, it’s vital that Information Studies syllabi are in touch with practice. I’m really thrilled, therefore, to be attending my first ever Umbrella conference, and delivering a paper in its stream on “Future Skills and Future Roles.”

I’m looking forward to seeing the other papers that have been accepted in this stream (and, before then, to the uklibchat session at Library Camp London on ‘Design Your Own Library and Information Qualification‘). For now, here’s the abstract of my paper, which will be published in the proceedings (Facet, 2013):

Taking up the theme of ‘standards and qualifications that society can trust,’ this paper explores the role of practitioners in the education of the next generation of information professionals.

After a brief review of alternative models of praxis in LIS qualifications, including the old Library Association exams and the US model of library schools based alongside university libraries, the impact of communities of practice on career entrants is explored.  The extent to which information professionals are involved in the MA LIS is highlighted; the roles they play as guest lecturers, sessional lecturers and external examiners; and the influence they exert as employers of newly qualified librarians.

Finally, this paper argues that when we talk about ‘knowledge transfer’ and ‘links between research and practice,’ information should flow in both directions: from academe to practitioners and vice versa. It is asserted that the aim should be a virtuous circle of professional education that evolves to meet current and future information service needs. In this model, practitioners identify research issues; academics conduct research (ideally collaboratively with colleagues in practice); research-led teaching at Masters level encourages new professionals to focus on real-world issues in the application of their research skills; new professionals become research-engaged practitioners who identify research issues; and repeat ad infinitum.

With new international cataloguing code Resource Description and Acccess (RDA) being implemented, a brief case study from UK cataloguing is presented, and ways in which practitioners and academics are working together to create new knowledge are demonstrated.

At the conference itself, I’ll present a shorter version, highlighting how practitioners are and can be involved in the delivery and evolution of the MA LIS.

Digital Bibliography

 

The latest issue of Library Review presents, as editor Judith Broady-Preston writes, “a range of papers from the best of the current crop of postgraduates, based on their theses and dissertations, showcasing the work of new entrants to the profession and providing readable access to cutting edge research.”

Alongside papers from City University, Loughborough, Ottawa and others, we have a calling card for the kind of research alumni of the Historical Bibliography module (INSTG012) are producing. As Elizabeth McCarthy, Sarah Wheale and I put it in our article, such work “exists at the nexus of three disciplines: librarianship, bibliography and digital humanities (utilising computing in the pursuit of humanities research” (p. 562) and, I would argue, is at the forefront of the nascent field of Digital Bibliography – the utilisation of Digital Humanities techniques within the older discipline of Bibliography. In my chapter in the recently published Digital Humanities in Practice, I discuss the use of technology by bibliographers and rare books librarians, and the two case studies in the chapter – by H.R. Woudhuysen and Marieke Van Delft – are available online.

The current paper, ‘Early Modern Oxford Bindings in Twenty-first Century Markup‘ is based on Elizabeth McCarthy’s MA LIS dissertation research, and, we hope, represents an appropriate balance between the technical skills required to enhance 17th century binders’ records with TEI and the bibliographic and subject knowledge necessary to appreciate the value of the pilot study Liz conducted within the wider context of bindings research and library collection management in the early modern period. Our presentation of the significance to the Bodleian of the manuscript Binders Book that is the object at the centre of the work was enhanced by Rare Books Curator Sarah Wheale’s contribution. As a lecturer, I hope that our assertion is true, that the project provides “an example of the kind of work that can be undertaken by library employees as part of their graduate studies, which allows for innovation and the incorporation of new research methodologies within traditional library projects.” (p. 562).  Certainly, in the case of the Binders Book in TEI,

The researcher [Liz] was able to step outside the constraints of an existing library management system and encoding standard (MARC) and think about the scholarly concerns of analytical and descriptive bibliography: how could the entries in the BB best be represented? She was able to consider specialist users with an interest in Oxford bindings, and to build a resource with their needs in mind … (p. 573).

Melissa Terras has written elsewhere about the choices academics make when they decide to co-author a paper with a student or former student, and the inherent ethical considerations – principally the contribution that the academic makes to the work. This article not only is a terrific achievement on Liz’s part, but also the first of a little clutch of publications – some solo-authored and a couple written with Hist Bib alumni during or after their time studying at UCL – that sets out my wares as a Digital Bibliographer and a supervisor of Digital Bibliographers. As such, I’m delighted that Liz’s MA LIS research is first out of the publication box; that it’s representing UCL in Library Review‘s issue ‘Showcasing Postgraduate Research’; and that it’s come out right in the middle of our recruitment season for the MA LIS and MA DH. Students and prospective students with an interest in cataloguing need not worry, though, cataloguing research and supervision is, and will always be, equally core to my practice.

I’ll link through to Liz’s own blog on the article when it goes live, and, for those of you without online access to Library Review, copies of the authors’ final text will be available as soon as is possible (and legal) on the Oxford and UCL institutional repositories.

References

Broady-Preston, J. (2012). Showcasing postgraduate research. Library Review. 61 (8/9). Full-text available at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?issn=0024-2535&volume=61&issue=8&articleid=17065501&show=html

McCarthy, E., Welsh, A., & Wheale, S. (2012). Early modern Oxford bindings in twenty-first century markup. Library Review, 61 (8/9), 561-576 .DOI: 10.1108/00242531211292079

Terras, M. (2011). Computer games and author lists. Melissa Terras’s Blog, 25 November 2011. Available at http://melissaterras.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/computer-games-and-author-lists.html

Van Delft, M. (2012). Case study: Watermarks in paper: four related online projects. In C. Warwick, M. Terras, & J. Nyhan (Eds.), Digital Humanities in practice. London: Facet. Full-text available at http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/dh-in-practice/chapter-7/

Welsh, A. (2012). Historical Bibliography in the digital world. In C. Warwick, M. Terras, & J. Nyhan (Eds.), Digital Humanities in practice (pp. 139-165). London: Facet. Retrieved from http://www.facetpublishing.co.uk/title.php?id=7661

Woudhuysen, H.R. (2012). Case study: The Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts, 1450-1700. In C. Warwick, M. Terras, & J. Nyhan (Eds.), Digital Humanities in practice. London: Facet. Full-text available at http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/dh-in-practice/chapter-7/

Library School Week in the Life

Library Day in the Life 6 may be officially over, but, in the famous ref desk cliche, if you liked that, you may also like the regular “My Week” feature in CILIP Update. This month, current MA LIS student Helen Doyle has a very nice write-up of her activities in a typical week (from last term), including classes in Cataloguing, Classification, PCIT, and Collection Management.